a wrinkle in time

Follow The Present Stage on Instagram at @thepresentstage

The Present Stage: Conversations with Theater Writers is hosted by Dan Rubins, a theater critic for Slant Magazine. You can also find Dan's reviews on Cast Album Reviews  and in The New Yorker's Briefly Noted column.

Terce: A Practical Breviary is running at the Prototype Festival through February 4th at The Space at Irondale. Terce: A Practical Breviary is a production by HERE. Find out more at www.prototypefestival.org.

The Present Stage supports the national nonprofit Hear Your Song. If you'd like to learn more about Hear Your Song and how to support empowering youth with serious illnesses to make their voices heard though songwriting, please visit www.hearyoursong.org

Follow The Present Stage on Instagram at @thepresentstage

The Present Stage: Conversations with Theater Writers is hosted by Dan Rubins, a theater critic for Slant Magazine. You can also find Dan's reviews on Cast Album Reviews  and in The New Yorker's Briefly Noted column.

The Present Stage supports the national nonprofit Hear Your Song. If you'd like to learn more about Hear Your Song and how to support empowering youth with serious illnesses to make their voices heard though songwriting, please visit www.hearyoursong.org

We're no strangers to books with religious overtones or stories meant to impart a moral lesson, but this episode's journey to Camazotz with Madeleine L'Engle's classic work A Wrinkle in Time is definitely the most overtly religious book we've tackled.  Jesus, Charles Wallace... or Jesus= Charles Wallace? We're not entirely sure. We're also not entirely sure if our extreme irritation with a 5 year old makes us terrible people. This book is a straight up romp where plot is concerned, but we lose the signal a bit with what the author is saying about gender roles, the nature of evil, faith, physics, and the world. We're discussing all things Who, Which and Whatsit, tesseracts, pulsating brains, and soft fluffy beasts to try to figure it out though!

These Books Made Me is a podcast about the literary heroines who shaped us and is a product of the Prince George's County Memorial Library System podcast network. Stay in touch with us via Twitter @PGCMLS with #TheseBooksMadeMe or by email at TheseBooksMadeMe@pgcmls.info. For recommended readalikes and deep dives into topics related to each episode, visit our blog at https://pgcmls.medium.com/.

We mentioned a lot of topics in this episode. Here’s a brief list of some informative articles and videos about some of them if you want to do your own further research:

The enduring impact of the book: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/remarkable-influence-wrinkle-in-time-180967509/

A remarkable journey: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2007/09/rereading-madeleine-l-engle.html

Sci-fi or no?: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/66705/how-wrinkle-time-changed-sci-fi-forever

Some books find us at the right age and in the right frame of mind to lodge an enduring hold on our imagination; these are the books we turn to again and again, which become the cherished classics of our personal canon.

On this week's episode, the Book Review's thriller columnist and writer at large Sarah Lyall talks to the host Gilbert Cruz about Madeleine L'Engle's 1962 novel "A Wrinkle in Time," in which the protagonist and her younger brother set out to rescue their father from the supernatural embodiment of evil that is holding him captive. Lyall first read the book when she was 9 years old and returned to it repeatedly throughout her childhood.

"I used to write my name in it every time I read the book," Lyall says. "I probably had 10 signatures there. And I could watch my signature change, I could try new types of signature. I tried cursive and I tried capitals, and I put a little flourish next to it."

Lyall says that what first drew her to "A Wrinkle in Time" was the book's "fantastic heroine," Meg: "She's really smart, but sort of unkempt. She has messy hair, she has glasses, she has braces, people think she's weird. ... But what really happens in the book that I think resonated with me, that I realize now, is that it's a book about two children who've lost their father. And I read the book quite soon after my father died. He died when I was 8. And it was a really lost time. And I think what mostly appealed to me about the book was the notion that you actually could get your father back. And that you as the girl, as the girl who felt so clueless, actually had means within yourself to pull yourself together and be brave enough to do it."

We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

Jordan's dreams come true as she and fellow-Oregonian Jasmin Savoy Brown (THE LEFTOVERS, YELLOWJACKETS, SCREAM) have a heart to heart about Raven in THAT'S SO RAVEN, Meg in WRINKLE IN TIME, and the girls of PLAN B...and dairy, queer representation, standing up for what you believe in, and why releasing music is scarier than making TV and movies.

Then, Jordan's hoping for that DEEP WATER will be both a trashy delight and the herald of a new era of erotic thrillers.

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With Jordan Crucchiola and Jasmin Savoy Brown

They almost succeed. Very, very nearly. This week, Amy, Sean and the other guy do their best to discuss heroes...and end up discussing fairy tales and gender binaries, romantic chemistry and cinema demographics, and anything else that skirts around the issue. Being heroic is hard. Writing heroic characters ain’t a picnic either. Who were the heroes of times gone by? What makes a hero in the modern age? Grab your sword – or your biscuit – and follow the Word Docs as they explore different flavours of heroism. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

They almost succeed. Very, very nearly. This week, Amy, Sean and the other guy do their best to discuss heroes...and end up discussing fairy tales and gender binaries, romantic chemistry and cinema demographics, and anything else that skirts around the issue. Being heroic is hard. Writing heroic characters ain’t a picnic either. Who were the heroes of times gone by? What makes a hero in the modern age? Grab your sword – or your biscuit – and follow the Word Docs as they explore different flavours of heroism. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week’s podcast, Anita opens the door on some of the strange imagery from her dreams. Then, we work through our feelings about Ava DuVernay’s film adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s children’s classic, A Wrinkle in Time and discover that maybe how you feel about this movie depends on how in touch you are with your inner child. Also, because so many people seem to wrongly think that we “agree” with the ways in which the current administration is scapegoating video games, we dive into the White House’s tactics and what our critiques of games and media in general are actually saying. Finally, we wrap things up with some cheers and recommendations in What’s Your FREQ-Out?!

Segment Timestamps:

Start: Ebony and Phil announce the winners of our book giveaway
1:00 introductions
2:45 Anita’s weird dreams
4:08 pop culture news (box office milestones and Ready Player One’s premiere)
8:10 A Wrinkle in Time
27:10 The Trump administration’s scapegoating of video games
44:10 What’s Your FREQ-Out?!
Ebony on Bodyminds Reimagined by Sami Schalk and on Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga
47:15 Carolyn on Radiant Historia
49:30 Anita on Anxy Magazine
52:15 wrap-up

Relevant Links:

Anxy Magazine: https://anxymag.com/
Lois McMaster Bujold and the Vorkosigan saga http://www.dendarii.com/
Bodyminds Reimagined by Sami Schalk https://www.dukeupress.edu/bodyminds-reimagined
Brie Code’s Tru Luv Media (tend-and-befriend games): http://www.truluvmedia.com/
Tom VanDerWerff’s piece on A Wrinkle in Time: https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/3/12/17098464/a-wrinkle-in-time-ava-duvernay-review-storm-reid-christianity
Cited pieces on video game violence:
By Simon Parkin: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/donald-trump-takes-on-the-nonexistent-link-between-violent-video-games-and-mass-shootings
By Tom Bissell: http://grantland.com/features/line-explores-reasons-why-play-shooter-games/

Is Disney's new fantasy family film A Wrinkle in Time worth your time? The Cinemaholics review this and plenty other new releases, including Thoroughbreds, Atlanta Season 2, Jessica Jones Season 2, and Love, Simon.

• 00:04:47 – Off-Topics: Oscars discussion, SXSW Film Festival updates
• 00:21:55 – A Wrinkle in Time review
• 00:51:00 – Mini Reviews: Thoroughbreds, Atlanta Season 2, Jessica Jones Season 2, Love, Simon

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.